Attitude (psychology)
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- This article is about a psychological term. For other meanings, see Attitude.
Attitude is a key concept in psychology. Attitudes are positive or negative views of an "attitude object": i.e., a person, behaviour, or event. People can also be "ambivalent" towards a target, meaning that they simultaneously possess a positive and a negative attitude.
Attitudes develop on the basis of evaluative responding. Attitudes develop on the ABC model (affect, behavioral change and cognition). For an attitude to form an individual goes through the steps of responding to an entity on an affective, behavioral change and cognitive level. The affective response is a physiological response that expresses an individual's preference for an entity. The behavioral intention is a verbal indication of the intention of an individual. The cognitive response is a cognitive evaluation of the entity to form an attitude. Most attitudes in individuals are a result of social learning from the environment.
The link between attitude and behavior exists but depends on attitude specificity, attitude relevance, personality factors, social constraints and timing of measurement. Several factors play a role for an attitude to cause a behavior. For example, A person may have a positive attitude towards blood donation but may not necessarily go to a blood bank to donate his blood.
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Implicit and explicit attitudes
There is also considerable research emerging on "implicit" attitudes, which are attitudes which people are not consciously aware of, but which have real effects as identified through sophisticated experiments using people's response times to stimuli (how quickly they can make judgments about them). Implicit and "explicit" attitudes (i.e. ones people report when they consciously ask themselves how much they like a target objects) both seem to affect people's behaviour, although in different ways. They tend not to be strongly associated with each other, although in some cases they are. The exact relationship between them is not currently well understood.
Attitude formation
Unlike personality, attitudes are expected to change as a function of experience, and there are numerous theories of attitude formation and attitude change, including:
- Dissonance-reduction theory, associated with Leon Festinger
- Self-perception theory, associated with Daryl Bem
- Meta programs, associated with NLP
- Persuasion
- Elaboration Likelihood Model associated with Richard E. Petty
- Social judgment theory
- Balance theory
- Abundance theory
Attitude change
Attitudes can be changed through persuasion. Persuasion is the process of a source attempting to change the attitude of a target. There are several factors that effect this process.
- Target Characteristics: People with higher self esteem are less easily persuaded than people with lower self esteem. The mind frame and mood of the target also plays a role in this process.
- Source Characteristics: The major source characteristics are expertise, trustworthiness and attractiveness.
- Message Characteristics: The nature of the message plays a role in the persuasion process. Sometimes presenting both sides of a story is useful to help change attitudes.
- Cognitive Routes: A message can appeal to an individual's cognitive evaluation to help change an attitude. In the central route to persuasion the individual is presented with the data and motivated to evaluate the data and arrive at an attitude changing conclusion. In the peripheral route to attitude change, the individual is encouraged to not look at the message content, but at the source characteristics. This is commonly seen in modern advertisements that feature celebrities. In some cases, doctors and experts are used. In other cases film stars are used exclusively for their attractiveness.
Attitude in the workplace
When it comes to Human Resource Management and recruiting, in recent years hire for attitude became a well known mantra. Several commercial tests such as the LAB Profile, iWAM and PAPI were developed to measure work Attitude and motivation, e.g. for pre-employment testing.
References
- [1] From USA Today "Power of a super attitude"